For example, there’s some important planning going on in medium and large companies. Corporations are finally coming around to recognize a revealing statistic: lose a valuable mid-management resource and the tangible losses can be 150% of that manager’s annual salary!

Costs associated with recruiting, interviewing, selecting and training new mid-management add up. Not to mention the cost of decreased morale and productivity.

Middle managers make up 7-8% of any company. Because of the current rate of turnover of middle managers looking for better opportunities, the openings created have generated an employee’s market. We hear reports of mid-management candidates getting good job offers on the initial interview.

Contrary to current thought, human resources departments have found that midlevel managers leave jobs for one main reason. It’s not salary. Money is the least significant factor in turnover. And they don’t leave bad companies. It turns out they leave bad bosses.

As a result of all this, two important phenomena are occurring.

First, corporations are bending over backwards to retain middle managers. And there are a lot of unique opportunities if your career path has you thinking about moving into management or upgrading your current position.

Secondly, recruiters are targeting middle managers. They are collecting and offering pools of talent to meet a company’s general purposes. Besides, with more people younger than 40 entering management, a whole new set of career search priorities is being set in motion.

Here’s what this means for you. If you’re serious about advancing your career, you should think of yourself as a “free agent.” The days of lifetime tenure are long gone. People are expecting to change jobs and even careers several times in the course of a lifetime. And they’re looking for jobs with meaning.

So, if you’re ready to make a move, the time is ripe. But you must move forward with a deliberate plan of action. One that plots out your best moves step-by-step. Why? Because the job marketplace has changed a lot since the last time you were in it And if you go into unprepared, you’ll get eaten alive by the competition.

When you take the time to follow a savvy plan, you can dramatically reduce the time you spend in the marketplace from weeks and months to day! What’s more, you can equip yourself with valuable strategies and techniques that can put you way ahead of the completion. And command a lot more money than you could possibly gain if you tried to do it completely on your own.